I am senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News. I write about energy and environment issues, frequently focusing on global warming. I have presented environmental analysis on CNN, CNN Headline News, CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and several national radio programs. My environmental analysis has been published in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. I studied atmospheric science and majored in government at Dartmouth College. I obtained my Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.

Shock Poll: Meteorologists Are Global Warming Skeptics

A recent survey of American Meteorological Society members shows meteorologists are skeptical that humans are causing a global warming crisis. The survey confirms what many scientists have been reporting for years; the politically focused bureaucratic leadership of many science organizations is severely out of touch with the scientists themselves regarding global warming issues.

According to American Meteorological Society (AMS) data, 89% of AMS meteorologists believe global warming is happening, but only a minority (30%) is very worried about global warming.

This sharp contrast between the large majority of meteorologists who believe global warming is happening and the modest minority who are nevertheless very worried about it is consistent with other scientist surveys. This contrast exposes global warming alarmists who assert that 97% of the world’s scientists agree humans are causing a global warming crisis simply because these scientists believe global warming is occurring. However, as this and other scientist surveys show, believing that some warming is occurring is not the same as believing humans are causing a worrisome crisis.

Other questions solidified the meteorologists’ skepticism about humans creating a global warming crisis. For example, among those meteorologists who believe global warming is happening, only a modest majority (59%) believe humans are the primary cause. More importantly, only 38% of respondents who believe global warming is occurring say it will be very harmful during the next 100 years.

With substantially fewer than half of meteorologists very worried about global warming or expecting substantial harm during the next 100 years, one has to wonder why environmental activist groups are sowing the seeds of global warming panic. Does anyone really expect our economy to be powered 100 years from now by the same energy sources we use today? Why immediately, severely, and permanently punish our economy with costly global warming restrictions when technological advances and the free market will likely address any such global warming concerns much more efficiently, economically and effectively?

In another line of survey questions, 53% of respondents believe there is conflict among AMS members regarding the topic of global warming. Only 33% believe there is no conflict. Another 15% were not sure. These results provide strong refutation to the assertion that “the debate is over.”

Interestingly, only 26% of respondents said the conflict among AMS members is unproductive.

Overall, the survey of AMS scientists paints a very different picture than the official AMS Information Statement on Climate Change. Drafted by the AMS bureaucracy, the Information Statement leaves readers with the impression that AMS meteorologists have few doubts about humans creating a global warming crisis. The Information Statement indicates quite strongly that humans are the primary driver of global temperatures and the consequences are and will continue to be quite severe. Compare the bureaucracy’s Information Statement with the survey results of the AMS scientists themselves.

Scientists who have attended the Heartland Institute’s annual International Conference on Climate Change report the same disconnect throughout their various science organizations; only a minority of scientists believes humans are causing a global warming crisis, yet the non-scientist bureaucracies publish position statements that contradict what the scientists themselves believe. Few, if any, of these organizations actually poll their members before publishing a position statement. Within this context of few actual scientist surveys, the AMS survey results are very powerful.

In contrast to the AMS survey, where all respondents are AMS meteorologists, a majority have Ph.D.s and fully 80% have a Ph.D. or Masters Degree, position statements by organizational bureaucracies carry little scientific weight. For example, a position statement recently published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and frequently cited as the “definitive” indication of scientific consensus on global warming was authored by a mere 23 persons. Of those 23 persons, only five had Ph.D.s in a field closely related to climate science, an equal number (5) were staffers for environmental activist groups, two were politicians, one was the EPA general counsel under the Clinton administration and 19 of the 23 had already spoken out on behalf of global warming alarmism prior to being chosen for the panel. Clearly the scientific weight of the NAS statement pales in comparison to the AMS meteorologist survey.

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“Instead of arguing about the degrees the earth is warming by, why don’t we just start cleaning up the environment which is something we were suppose to do over 40 years ago”

because if a doubling of co2 only increases the temperature by 1.3F, then we don’t have to implement all of the stupid taxes the liberals are pushing for.

@acetracy

I’m all for cleaning up the environment but I would argue global warming has taken the national focus off of cleaning up the environment and has instead put everyone’s focus on paying more taxes, using inefficient and expensive energy sources and making ridiculous lifestlyle changes in general.

Meteorologist is a very clever name for your local weatherman. And if you have every know a TV weatherman you know that IQ, science, and intelligence is NOT what they were hired for, but like their pearly whites and ability to read cue cards.

Anyone who wants to argue against global warming just has to ask himself where there is a local river or stream he would take his kids to swim in or drink from. Certainly not any of the major river systems in the USA. Anyone who wants to argue against global warming obviously think that continual pollution of our waterways, oceans and farm land is the road to future prosperity.

Instead of arguing about the degrees the earth is warming by, why don’t we just start cleaning up the environment which is something we were suppose to do over 40 years ago. Have you ever burned coal in your living room? Well that is what the USA is doing right now… Breath in those lovely toxins and forget about global warming seems to be the message Forbes, Koch Brothers and the rest of the Republican party want us to do….

It’s also true that James Taylor is a science denial shill who works at the Heartland Institute on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. His weekly Forbes column is devoted to misrepresenting climate science and producing propaganda in support of coal, gas and oil companies.

It’s really no surprise that Dr Jay Cadbury fake PhD and James Taylor fake environment and energy expert are happily working together.

A very large majority of respondents (89%) indicated that global warming is happening; in contrast few indicated it isn’t happening (4%), or that they “don’t know” (7%). Respondents who indicated that global warming is happening were asked their views about its primary causes; a large majority indic ated that human activity was the primary cause.

Meteorologists are the hands-on scientists who know weather and climate intimately, that is why they are skeptics. The bureaucracy has been taken over by the alarmist propaganda that promises an Armageddon if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels. Their political allies have already passed numerous laws that in many ways are harmful to civilized life. They control scientific publications and prevent papers that do not share their view from being published. Result is that their false science of greenhouse warming is pushed and the truth about it is suppressed. Let me make this clear with a quick survey of climate science. We have global temperature records going back to the middle of the nineteenth century that record warming that involves simply coming out of the Little Ice Age, no carbon dioxide involved. If you go back to the beginning of the twentieth century it actually starts with ten years of cooling. Early twentieth century warming then starts suddenly in 1910 and stops in 1940, at the beginning of World War II. Greenhouse effect is ruled out by its rapid start. It is also ruled out by its sudden cessation in 1940 while carbon dioxide kept steadily increasing. It is probably caused by solar influence as Bjørn Lomborg has suggested. From about 1950 to 1976 there was no warming while carbon dioxidejust kept going up. Many excuses but no satisfactory explanation exist for failure of the greenhouse effect to work during these years. In 1978 satellites started to measure global temperature. Both satellite measurements and radiosonde measurements show that there was no warming in the eighties and nineties. Ground-based measurements, on the other hand, report steady warming that is called the “late twentieth century warming.” I have shown in my book “What Warming?” that this warming is a result of data manipulation. That makes it truly anthropogenic. And that warming is the same warming that Hansen spoke of in 1988 when he testified to the Senate that warming had started. Satellites show that the eighties and nineties were a period of ENSO oscillations – El Ninos alternating with La Ninas – and that it came to an end with the unusual, giant super El Nino of 1998. This one brought so much warm water across the ocean with it that global temperature rose a third of a degree within the next four years. It then stopped and there has not been any warming since then. This warming and not any greenhouse effect was the cause of the very warm first decade of our century. And this leaves no period since the beginning of the twentieth century that could be called greenhouse warming. However, the Arctic is a special case that needs to be explained. Arctic warming is very real and is often pointed to as proof of greenhouse warming. Unfortunately this is another untruth we are subjected to. Arctic warming started suddenly at the beginning of the twentietg century after two thousand years of slow cooling. We know that there was no increase of carbon dioxide when the warming started and that eliminates the greenhouse effect as a cause (see E&E 22(8):1069, 2011). It turns out that Arctic warming is caused by warm Gulf Stream water carried by Atlantic currents into the Arctic. The temperature of these warm currents reaching the Arctic in 2010 exceeded anything the Arctic had experienced during the previous 2000 years. With that, we can state that no greenhouse warming has been observed within the last 100 years. This is what real climate science tells us about our climate. Since no greenhouse warming has been observed we should ask why. The observations of Ferenc Miskolczi using the NOAA weather balloon database that goes back to 1948 provide an answer (E&E 21(4):432, 2011). He was able to demonstrate that the transparency of the atmosphere in the infrared where carbon dioxide absorbs has been constant for 61 years. At the same time the amount of carbon dioxide in air increased by 21.6 percent. This means that addition of all this carbon dioxide to air had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. This is an empirical observation, not derived from any theory. It overrules any calculations from theory that do not agree with this. Specifically, it overrules all predictions of warming based on the greenhouse effect that IPCC and the global warming movement are pushing. Miskolczi’s work was peer reviewed and has been available in scientific literature for more than a year now. No peer reviewed articles opposing it have appeared in this time. It is likely that this not for lack of trying. It is time to recognize the falsity of the global warming doctrine and to start dismantling laws crafted to “mitigate” a non-existent warming.

So Arno. We have good data on the heat content of North Atlantic currents going back 2000 years? And this explains whats happening in the Arctic? All the way around to to the Laptec & Chuckchi seas in the region around the Bering Straight – Atlantic warming is reaching that far?

Let me put a single number in front of you Arno.

2.1 10^23 Joules.

This is roughly the total increase in heat of all parts of the climate system in the last 50 years. 90% of it in the oceans. This is observation, not theory.

So where has this heat come from?

Since most of it is in the oceans (90%) maybe it has been drawn out of the atmosphere? If that were the case, atmospheric temperatures would have dropped by around 40 Deg C. I think we can agree that hasn’t happened!

Similarly, freezing Ice & snow might liberate heat. Ice & Snow would need to have grown by about 12,000 Billion tonnes a year if that was the source of the extra heat. Instead, Ice & Snow has been shrinking by around 500 billion tonnes per year. Nope, it aint that.

Could Geothermal heat be the source? Nope. Normal flows of heat from within the Earth are only about 1/3 of this. And since geothermal fluxes change VERY VERY slowly, any accumulation of heat would require that geothermal heat has grown by a factor of 4 in 1/2 a century. And this hasn’t happened.

At this point we have run out of terrestial explanations. There is no source here on Earth that could have supplied this much heat!!!

So it MUST be a thermal imbalance between the Earth & Space/The Sun. Nothing else fits the evidence. NOTHING.

So forget about Miskolczi and his use of questionable radiosonde data. The most basic data we have says it must be an extra-terrestrial cause.

Can you at least offer some independent critical thinking instead of regurgitating Meehl et al 2011? Secondly, any study with Kevin Trenberth’s (the two-bit lying fraudster of climate science) name to it is suspect already.

So, James Taylor is resorting to this “opinion” poll. The shock is he will hold their judgement higher than climate scientists and organizations. Next thing he will be quoting Senator Inhofe “God won’t allow it to happen”.

Why can’t the Heartland Institute and its members stop distorting information or using emotionally-charged language in an attempt to influence people? The language in Mr. Taylor’s article suggests that since it’s a minority of scientists who are “very worried” about the effects of climate change, the majority are therefore “skeptics” who don’t believe mankind had an influence in climate change. He somehow manages to avoid bringing up that 42% of scientists are still “somewhat worried” about climate change (meaning a total of 72% of scientists have at least some concern and worry over climate change). That’s VERY different than what he is implying in his article.

Here is a summary of what was discovered in the survey:

A majority of scientists believe climate change is happening. (89%) A majority of scientists believe it is mainly or partially caused by mankind. (70%) A majority of scientists believe it will be harmful to us. (76%) A majority of scientists have at least some worry/concern over climate change. (72%) A majority of scientists believe we can mitigate at least some of that harm. (68%, with another 22% believing at least a small amount of harm can be mitigated)

Really, a simple reading of the survey shows that is what scientists believe. Yet these pieces from the Heartland Institute make convoluted leaps of reasoning that don’t bear the weight of the data upon which they’re based.